BOSTON – Retired judge Thomas Brownell says he didn’t pay much attention to who was appointed probation officers when he presided at the district court in Plymouth.

Brownell, who lives in Quincy, testified Wednesday at the criminal trial of former state Probation Commissioner John O’Brien, who also lives in Quincy.

Prosecutors were unable to extract much information about personnel policies from Brownell, a former lawmaker who was the presiding judge at Plymouth District Court when two new probation officers were hired in 2008. Prosecutors have raised questions about the qualification of the two women who were hired.

One of those women, Patricia Mosca, is a Democratic State Committee member from Plymouth, who also testified on Wednesday. That other hire was Melissa Melia, the daughter of a State Police detective working for Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe.

“I’d think to myself, ‘Well, who’s that?’” Brownell testified about his reaction when Mosca and Melia showed up to work at the court over which he presided.

Brownell, who retired in 2010, said, “That is during the time that I’m sort of going out the door.”

Preferring not to meddle in hiring decisions made by higher-ups, Brownell said he participated in second-round interviews for probation officer jobs, but considered them “robo-interviews” and believed they were largely a waste of time.

“I felt that it was not an expedient use of my time,” Brownell said.

“That’s the way the commissioner’s office scheduled it, is that fair to say?” prosecutor Fred Wyshak countered later.

O’Brien and two of his former deputies, Elizabeth Tavares and William Burke III, are facing charges in federal court that they rigged hiring in the probation department to shuttle jobs to politically connected applicants regardless of whether they were the most qualified candidates.

Mosca, in her testimony Wednesday about why she became a probation officer, contradicted a prior witness about why she sought that job.

Mosca, who testified under an immunity order, said she had worked at the state Department of Transitional Assistance for 36 years before taking a pay cut to become a probation officer at Plymouth District Court. “I was really unhappy with my job...” said Mosca, testifying that work at the welfare department had increasingly become about “paper pushing” and she wanted to work directly with people, which was the reason she applied for a job at probation at the age of 56.

Francine Gannon, an aide to state Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, previously testified that Mosca wanted the job so she could retire with a more lucrative state pension.

Page 2 of 2 - Mosca disputed that notion, saying, “I’d rather do what I wanted to do than have the extra money.” After prosecutor Wyshak presented her with a series of documents, she eventually conceded she “probably” did tell Gannon that.

Prosecutors are trying to prove in federal court in Boston that probation jobs were granted to politically backed candidates in exchange for “political currency” with little regard for whether the hire was the most qualified.

The defense team has attempted to show that the hired candidates were qualified for the jobs, and the practice of taking politicians’ recommendations into account was a worthwhile and prevalent practice.